If
not giving a free card is that important, it should
be clear how valuable it is to get a free card when
you don't have the best hand. That free card might
turn a hand you would have folded into a winner or
save you a bet on a hand with which you intended to
call anyway. Of course, getting a free card against
reasonably good players is not easy. One way is to
put in a small raise on an early round in the hope
that everyone still in the pot will check around to
you on the next round. Then you can also check. To
make this play you must be sure you will act after
your opponent (or opponents) on the next round, so
the play is used most commonly in a game like hold
'em where the order of betting is fixed by the position
of the dealer.

Other ways of getting a free card fall under the heading
of tricks and ploys. For example, you can bet out
of turn to make your opponent check, which is not
quite ethical but usually legal. After being reminded
it's not your turn to act, you retrieve your bet,
and when your opponent checks, you also check. You
can take chips from your stack as though you intend
to raise, and then when your opponent decides not
to bet after all, you check. Sometimes just getting
your chips ready to call, as though you're enthusiastic
about calling, will prevent your opponent from betting.
However, against top players such plays usually work
only to create a bad impression, and they rarely succeed
more than once or twice.

Aggression
is Proactive

You're
making them react to you. You put them in situations
where they have to make tough choices, which gives
them extra opportunities to make mistakes. Their mistakes
are the source of profit in poker. Give them as many
chances to make a mistake as you can. Raise.

Strong, unrelenting aggression often causes the other
players to shift the focus of their thinking from
the game itself to you specifically. Rather than thinking
about their own hand and how they should play it,
they'll think in terms of you, of what you're likely
to do. At the extreme of this situation, you'll literally
own the table in the sense that other players will
begin to focus their attention on you rather than
on their own hands.